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how the journey began

I remember the Facebook message she sent to a few ladies at our church.

My friend had been contacted by another state’s child welfare worker. Her husband’s relatives had hit some rough spots and our friends’ nieces had been removed from their home and were in need of a place to live. She and her husband were on the list of “kin” to call, a practice that is done in most situations when families can’t stay together due to abuse or neglect.

My friend – the beautiful, selfless, young woman, with two girls at home who were 2 and 3 – was asking this group of women via Facebook message – what should she do? Should they say yes and offer for the girls to come live with them? It looked like it would be a long-term placement leading to adoption, and this wasn’t something either of them were expecting, let alone planning for.

The group message went back and forth a little bit, as each of the women within the group offered our two cents about a situation none of us knew much about.

And even though we were uninformed, we loved our friend, and made sure she knew we’d support her in whatever ways we could.

When our friends made the decision to move forward with the process of welcoming the girls into their home and their family, our church was there to support them.

One Saturday afternoon while our friends were at a foster parent training class, we broke into their home, as any loving church family would do.

We brought in bunk beds, rearranged furniture, decorated walls, and made sure all of the girls would feel special in their home. We worked quickly, aiming to be done by the time our friends got back from their class. I’ll never forget their reaction when they came into their home. Tears and laughter and so many hugs. It still goes down as one of my absolute favorite days.

Our little church had found a practical way to come alongside this brave couple and their two (soon to be four) daughters. We didn’t know much about foster care or trauma, but we recognized the courage of our friends as they stepped into an unknown future for girls they’d never really known. That type of commitment and love made us all want to do something.

A few weeks passed, and they welcomed their nieces into their family. Now, a family of 6 with no relatives in the area for support, Dustin and I began to help out in little ways. We met them at the hospital one evening when their oldest girl had swallowed a penny. We babysat, so our friends could connect to a weekly small group and have date nights. I even got to attend “Grandparents’ Day” since their kindergartener didn’t have a grandparent in the area who could come.

Dustin and I were four years into our marriage at the time, and we hadn’t made any decisions on whether or not we’d have kids someday. We had been focused on graduate school, working a few part-time jobs, and just enjoying our twenties without the responsibilities that kids would certainly bring. But we had lots of experience around kids, and it felt pretty natural to offer help in this way.

It was a sweet season of our life, and when we decided to move back to Illinois just a couple of years later, saying goodbye to those precious girls was one of the hardest parts. They had become family.

When our friends said “yes” to their two nieces joining their family, I had absolutely no idea that the course of my life was being altered forever. But that is exactly what happened.

Their willingness to step into their girls’ story has forever impacted ours. The family we have built, the church we attend, the jobs that we love are ours, in part, because of the decision they made to open their hearts and home to two little girls who needed a forever family.

We watched their family walk a foreign road, and their living, breathing, demonstration of what it meant to love compelled us forward. Dustin and I could see a path in front of us that was different from anything we’d considered before. Their faithfulness will forever be a mile-marker in our foster care journey.

And once we began to dive deeper into understanding the foster care system as a whole, we simply could not look away.